NOFX

"45 Or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough To Go On Our Other Records"
(Fat Wreck Chords)

Actually there are 46, but who's counting? And who really cares, I'm havin' a blast reading the liner notes, I mean you got about a month's worth of reading material culled from eighteen years worth of spit and scribbles. If you were to take everything that's cool about Punk Rock, going way way back to the roots of the socio-political screamers and the modern maturity piss in the wind philosophizers and beachcombing jokers and whoever the Hell else and rolled 'em up into a big fattie (Hey Mike!) and smoked it till ya turned green. well shit, I dunno, NOFX kinda sounds like all of it. and they're having fun and you're having fun and some of this stuff really sucks, I mean what's with this "Lazy" thing? So you got two discs worth of previously unreleased or difficult to cure material that finally sees the light of day-like they couldn't think of anything new to write? Shit, read the notes, they wrote and recorded thirteen songs in some ten minutes? Well that's the "F**k The Kids" 7 inch they did a few years back. before we get to that, and yeah you're right dude, disc two, specifically "Catching ZZZ's" is the draw-it's outrageous! "Counting Sheep" heads up the "title" for disc one and begins with a resulting "new" track called "Pimps And Hookers" that damned if I can remember what it sounds like-a word of caution, take this stuff in small quantities-and it's about pimps and hookers and "They're getting laid while you're getting laid off." Hmm. didn't think I was gonna have to, um, think here. If song titles are any indication, they're all fucked in the head. So let's go for disc two; they went for the street slam vibe of yesterday-remember these guys were around for part of the Reagan era so they can throw around names like DRI and The Crumbsuckers and shit like that and know what they're talking about and to a certain degree the effectual silliness and stupidity with which they've touched so many lives. I mean to throw a Reggae-break in the middle of fucking "Last Caress" is wicked. it ain't good but it's wicked. So whaddya make of tunes called "Fun Things To Fuck (If You're A Winner)," and dare we suggest the loser's alternative? "Juice Head," "Talking Bout Yo' Momma," and I mean they say the songs were written at moment's notice and there's no other way to pull this off cuz none of it makes a fuck's worth of sense-at least this side of total inebriation-and therein lies the brilliance when you hear of "She's a whore bitch gutter slut likes to shove me up her butt drives a pickle wearing combat boots while farting." Pure art. Why'd they wait so long? There's the "Surfer" 7-inch that follows, so ya basically got side two made up in equal halves of complete childishness and mental abnormality. How can you pass this up? Halfway house Hard-Core and urine Rock that's an immense danger to themselves and everyone around them!

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